EXCLUSIVE: There was an audible gasp during this month’s Max Showcase in London when Francesca Gardiner, the new Harry Potter showrunner, let slip that a whopping 32,000 people had auditioned for what might well be the biggest three acting gigs of the decade.
Playing Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger in HBO‘s sparkly new TV series adaptation of the JK Rowling franchise will be totally transformative for a trio of young British up-and-comers. Just ask Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint or Emma Watson, all of whom became household names virtually overnight and are now wholly synonymous with the Potter franchise, warts and all.
The process to find the Boy Who Lived and his two best friends had been running for months prior to Gardiner’s revelation, following a much-publicized open callout published by the show’s casting director Lucy Bevan, which asked for children aged between nine and 11 as of April 2025 who are residents of the UK and Ireland. The call specified a commitment to “inclusive, diverse casting” and asked that, for each role, agents “submit qualified performers, without regard to ethnicity, sex, disability, race, sexual orientation and gender identity.” The initial round asked candidates to submit two videos, one performing a short story or poem and the second asking them to talk about themselves as well as “a family member, friend or pet that you are particularly close to.”
Three months on, and having waded through thousands upon thousands of audition tapes, Bevan’s team is thought to have started chemistry reads with the young wannabe thespians as the search for the chosen three is whittled down. We are told that those progressing through the rounds are in various stages of recall. A decision is expected relatively soon. From there, more news will likely flood in over the adult cast (that particular rumor mill has already started churning) and the other children, before shooting starts at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden over the summer. A costume designer has already been enlisted, Poor Things’ Holly Waddington, emerging alongside a drip-drip of news around the tentpole that has included British VFX outfit Framestore likely taking on the mammoth VFX task and Killing Eve scribe Laura Neal joining the writers’ room.
HBO declined comment for this article and agents tell us the near unprecedentedly large audition process has been heavily guarded by Bevan and her team – one jokingly dubs the process “he who must not be named” – but we’ve been piecing things together.
When the casting call was first unveiled, agents were very much ready, and so were parents. Agents that we’ve spoken with described a climate in which WhatsApps and emails were pinging off the charts, with excitement bubbling over given the impact that the movies had on the zeitgeist and considering many of these parents are Harry Potter ‘stans’.
The initial casting call was intended for any child – whether represented by an agency or not – but a more detailed breakdown was then sent round to agents that had depth and clarity over areas such as age and diversity, stressing once again the age ranges, which led to disappointment for some parents, although sources note that many may have cheekily put their eight or 12-year-olds forwards just to see what happened.
Those put forward by agencies were handed an automatic headstart by being given a two-page script to read for their audition rather than the simple intro. Slowly, Bevan’s team started getting through these and the recall process began.
Bevan’s team worked around the clock viewing the 32,000 tapes, with Gardiner saying at the Max Showcase that the team were getting through up to 1,000 a day as the team aimed to locate “some of the finest cream of British talent.” While this may sound unwieldy, Bevan’s team is large and sources who have been through familiar processes told us that casting execs will often know within less than a minute whether they want to put someone through. Given the sheer number of auditions, recalls are understood to be at varying stages rather than moving in one smooth arc.
The diversity of the three eventual victors has been a major talking point given the post-publication scrutiny Rowling has faced down the years over representation in the books, and given that Hermione was played by a Black actor in Jack Thorne’s theater adaptation The Cursed Child.
But while the casting call stressed inclusivity, agents tell us this has in no sense led to anything resembling a box-ticking exercise, which they welcomed. “I love the fact that the casting team had an open casting call running, meaning that anybody could audition – breaking down diversity and inclusion barriers,” says Stacey Burrows, who runs Articulate Agency, a shop focusing on helping kids from under-represented backgrounds. “These are dream roles and so many children from acting and non-acting backgrounds have auditioned.”
When the trio are settled upon, and it could be close, attention will turn to casting their friends and family, of which there are myriad. Given the sheer number of audition tapes that were submitted for these three roles, sources say it is likely that many other cast members will be drawn from said tapes, allowing Bevan’s team in some cases to kill two birds with one stone as they locate the future Draco Malfoy, Dean Thomas and Cho Chang. Some of the Weasley’s in particular, of which there are six brothers including mischievous twins Fred and George, could be drawn from those who don’t quite make the cut as Ron. And then there are understudies, body doubles and those who may be brought in to deputize during set up in order to avoid overworking the leads, who have to stick to stringent labor laws around working hours (notably, the Harry Potter movies were the catalyst for a change in UK law allowing child actors to work longer days).
“Although 32,000 auditionees is a huge amount for just three roles, Lucy’s team will no doubt be considering actors who have auditioned for other key roles in the series,” adds Burrows. “It is our role as the agents of children to manage expectations and talk about the realities of acting and how it can be extremely difficult to land a role.”
“I had post bags full of letters”
Whittling down the 32,000 sounds daunting but casting directors will tell you that one can always recognize that star quality. As the original casting director on the first movie, Susan Figgis knows this more than the average person.
The 32,000 somewhat pales in comparison to the circa-40,000 Figgis viewed, and this was of course the pre-internet era.
“I had post bags full of letters,” she tells Deadline 25 years on. “That original world I came from I would wander through schools and playgrounds and all sorts of interesting places just finding people [to cast].”
In fact, Figgis ended up quitting after disagreeing with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the U.S.) director Christopher Columbus over who should play Harry. At the time, Columbus was rumored to be keen to cast well-known young stars like Oscar-nominee Haley Joel Osment, or Jake Lloyd, who had just played Anakin in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. By comparison, Radcliffe only had an admittedly adorable turn in a BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield to his name when he auditioned.
“[Christopher Columbus] wanted to cast Americans and that just wasn’t my cup of tea,” says Figgis. “I believed then and I still believe now that if you get the right people you get the amazing film. With Daniel I just looked at him and thought, ‘God he’d be good’.”
Way back then, Figgis says she placed child welfare front and center, making a “huge effort” to ensure the kids felt “part of a group” and more than a cog in a movie machine as they progressed through the audition rounds. Yet not all Harry Potter graduates went on to enjoy a glittering career. Devon Murray, who played Seamus Finnigan, was ordered to pay his former agent €260,000 ($273,000) in unpaid commission following a court case and has been open about his years-long battle with depression. Jamie Waylett, who played Malfoy’s best buddy Vincent Crabbe, was jailed for two years for his participation in the 2011 riots in England.
Welfare concerns in the social media age
When it comes to welfare on Max’s Harry Potter, the advent of social media adds multiple layers of complication to the protection of children – just ask Australian Prime Minster Anthony Albanese, who is banning social media for all under-16s – and this can be a serious cause for concern. One moment a child’s Instagram can innocently show pictures of their dance class, school or gym to a few friends, and the next this is privy to millions of adoring followers.
“A child being cast in a studio or franchise project with a large worldwide following would be susceptible to having their information searched and shared on an international scale,” says another agent, who is speaking to parents all the time about these matters. “Parents need to look ahead and prepare for the potential of their child becoming well-known overnight.”
But if this can be managed, and those familiar with the process say it is being heavily prioritized, then agencies are hopeful of a second ‘Potter effect’ more than two decades on from The Philosopher’s Stone.
The UK’s Agents of Young Performers Association (AYPA), which launched two years ago and comprises a group of agencies lobbying for change in a highly-unregulated industry that is often branded a ‘Wild West’, says “strong collaboration” between agents, parents, casting directors and production teams “remains crucial to striking a balance and fostering the next generation of talent with care, respect, and a vision for their long-term success.”
“Since the announcement of the new Harry Potter casting, there has been a notable surge in applications to agents, with many children who had never previously considered acting now eager to pursue one of these highly coveted roles,” adds a spokeswoman for AYPA.
Articulate Agency’s Burrows, who is an AYPA member, is very hopeful for the future state of the sector, and says the UK child acting industry remains “widely respected by Hollywood.”
“We have children on our books that have beaten U.S. kids to U.S. roles,” she adds.
In just a short matter of weeks, some of these kid could be casting a spell over the next generation of Potter fans.
